


the sun is the same in a relative way but you're older

by Nara



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Angst, Endings, Epilogue, Gen, Introspection
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-15
Updated: 2019-04-15
Packaged: 2020-01-13 14:29:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 631
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18470842
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nara/pseuds/Nara
Summary: Every year is getting shorter, never seem to find the time. For plans like these have come to naught, on half a page of scribbled lines.---Everything is coming to an end, once again.





	the sun is the same in a relative way but you're older

**Author's Note:**

> The epilogue inspired me to write a short little ficlet.
> 
> The true end of homestuck is nigh.

Everything was coming to an end.

It was funny, when John thought about it, because he had been pretty sure everything had already come to an end.

He was 23 and it sure felt like an end.

The last number of years had become a blur. He couldn't even remember. Rose and Kanaya got married. Dave and Jade and Karkat went off gallivanting around Earth-C, discovering whatever it was that made them happy. Roxy and Calliope were around. Terezi went off...somewhere. John couldn't even remember who else there was.

Some days, John wasn't even sure he was there, wherever there was. He was almost certain on those days that he'd wake up in his bed on April 13, 2009. It would be his 13th birthday and he'd get a cake that he'd complain about and a new game that he could play with his friends that wouldn't destroy the world. His dad wouldn't be dead. John himself wouldn't have died over and over again. I  
He would just be a kid, dreaming again in anime.

Most days he knew that even if he wasn't there, he could never go back.

Apathy was a strange sort of thing. Once you realized it was what you were experiencing, it was still hard to care.

John thought he might be having some sort of existential crisis. Crisis felt like too strong a word for what he was feeling, so he wasn't sure. 

It was more like an existential sigh.

Was John happy? No. But was he unhappy? That, he wasn't sure. He didn't think he felt unhappy. 

He didn't think he felt much at all, anymore.

John was 23 and he couldn't remember the last time he felt.

When your world changes so suddenly and completely to a place of horror and stress, and then almost as suddenly you wind up at peace, it creates an emotional whiplash that John wasn't sure he was able to process.

He was pretty sure Rose would have said he was traumatized, and told him that he had PTSD. Maybe they all did. Maybe everyone was just doing their best to cope.

Maybe John's problem was that he wasn't. 

Twice already he'd experienced the end of the world as he knew it. Twice he had to start life over. And now he'd have to do it again. 

Calliope told him he had a choice. That he really could continue to live on Earth-C as things remained non-canon, as they became non-essential. And he was pretty sure if he went on to kill Lord English, his friends who had established lives here would just become another timeline he'd never return to, where only he had the memories left in the alpha timeline.

He wasn't sure he could handle that again. 

Even if he hadn't connected with his friends in years, even if he didn't know that Rose was sick, or if Roxy and Calliope were together, or what was even happening with anybody else...at least they all had the same memories. Disappearing into non-essentiality with everyone seemed almost peaceful. 

But...John knew he couldn't do that. He knew that in spite of the listlessness and ennui he'd been feeling over the past number of years, that he had a job to do. He was the friendleader, the palhoncho. He was the one with the retcon powers. He was the one who could bring this to a satisfying conclusion.

And if at the end of it all, the real honest-to-goodness end, there was still nothing on the other side? Well, John would deal with that when he got there.

>John: Get ready

The end was coming, whether he did anything or not. How it would end was up to him.

John closed his eyes, and took a breath.


End file.
